


identity and difference

by fracturedvaels



Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Introspection, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-17
Updated: 2015-08-17
Packaged: 2018-04-15 06:58:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4597167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fracturedvaels/pseuds/fracturedvaels
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Brother insists this is how people balance in a relationship; he says this is why he and Carver didn’t get along. You’re too much of the earth, he said, between hiccups, and he leaned back and laughed. Carver didn’t feel like earth. Nothing holy or wholesome or strong - he felt like air, but not Fenris’ air. Weak air, diseased air, brittle wings that carry the stench of blight.</p>
            </blockquote>





	identity and difference

Brother speaks in abstracts.

He told Carver once why he and Fenris get along: four elements, fire, water, earth, air. Brother was the fire and the earth; a base, the strength or something, and the passion and the burning and the want. Fenris was the water and the air, smooth and flowing, and soothing, and just so damn _cool_. The air stirred the fire, the water parted the earth, the water quenched the flames when they got too big… something something, Carver didn’t write it down. He didn’t care. 

Brother insists this is how people balance in a relationship; he says this is why he and Carver didn’t get along. _You’re too much of the earth_ , he said, between hiccups, and he leaned back and laughed. Carver didn’t feel like earth. Nothing holy or wholesome or strong - he felt like air, but not Fenris’ air. Weak air, diseased air, brittle wings that carry the stench of blight.

And then he met _them_.

They’re each the air - cool, he guesses, floating between this and that with ease. They have to be air, unattached, because Kirkwall is a monster and they’re always being shifted and shafted and shunned. It’s a miracle they find each other, and Carver worries for a time, before he settles: if Brother and Fenris can make it work with two, surely they can make it work with three.

Anders is the fire. Of course he is. Not just the magic, but beyond; there’s a burn to him, and when he gets to talking about something he cares about - the Mage Underground, how vile the Templars are, how bad the Circle is, _how much he loves Sebastian and Carver how he loves them oh so much so much so much_ -

Sometimes that fire burns too bright, and Justice comes out. Justice could be the air, pushing the fire ever onward, but they don’t quite have the grasp of balance and Carver thinks Justice is less the oxygen and more the kindling.

Sebastian is their water. Carver’s certain they’d have died a hundred times, like parched men in a desert, if not for him. He’s never seen someone calm Anders down so carefully and swiftly; like a bucket to the campfire, it leaves the embers and the steam, but it’s safer to be near, it’s even almost safer to touch. Sodden and soaked rage, he doesn’t put out the fire - he just brings it back down.

This is when Carver feels like the earth. Solid under foot, careful and ever present. Sometimes he leaves, and he feels like a failure - he’s the drop off a cliff, the canyon, the holes in the ground where rivers have dried and they leave dangerous ditches you can’t climb out of. But he feels hollow inside, too, just like the earth - and he can hear the song in his head, long before he dons the Warden armor, long before he ventures into the deep roads.

His veins are hollow like tunnels, the pump of blood beats in time like a boot-stomp march and his bones echo with orders he cannot obey, will not obey. He feels like the earth smothering the fire with too much force, because Anders shuts up with a glower and sits to simmer when Carver says to stop. He feels like the damn that staunches the flow of the river when he gets too rough, when Sebastian’s gentle hands cup his face and he just shoves them away.

Carver feels like the earth then, heavy and harrowed; he’s dirt in the eye, like he stamps out all the good, he feels _wrong_  and rotten and broken and, and, and - 

And he looks at them. He can’t feel the good things about himself, only the bad. Never the strength or the fertile ground, but the suffocating dampness of beach sand in lungs. And he looks at them, his fire, his water, and he wonders if they see only the bad in themselves too.

He wonders if Anders sees how he and Sebastian melt together, how Sebastian parts for him, how they steam and smoke when they’re all skin-on-skin and cheek to cheek. He wonders if Anders feels like a hearth or a forest fire.

And he wonders if Sebastian notices the things about himself - the gentleness, the calmness, but the quiet and righteous fury. He wonders if he trembled and dried up when standing up to Elthina, when he left the Chantry to defend Anders. Carver wonders if Sebastian feels like a river or a flood.

So maybe it’s not that bad. He comforts himself: maybe they see his strength. Maybe where he sees craggy ground and earthquakes they see gardens and forests. Carver wonders if he can be vulnerable for them, and let them cultivate him - let Sebastian plant his flowers and Anders burn away the dead things inside of him, let them make him something more.

But he wants this. Maker, he wants this something fierce - he craves them, aching like a cold, starved, dying man aching for the comforts of home. He will let himself be earth, for them, and be strong for them. He will let himself, Maker, he will.

**Author's Note:**

> i like being kinkshamed @ http://liviuserimond.tumblr.com/


End file.
